Signals & Bits: Recent Episodes
Ben Hilburn
Interviews with amazing people about software radio, the technology behind it, and everything it makes possible.
Today's discussion is with Daina Bouquin, the Head Librarian at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Daina is leading a new project, called The Space Library, in collaboration with the LibreSpace Foundation. We discuss some of the efforts within this project including metadata for space missions and small sats, citizen science, and STEM outreach.
Today I talk to Manuel Uhm, the Director of Silicon Marketing at Xilinx, about Xilinx's new Versal ACAP portfolio of devices. These devices are especially interesting from the perspective of software radio given their highly heterogeneous topology, new features like hard "AI Engines" and the Network-on-Chip, and the "AI RF" series which is specialized for radio designs.
Guest Bio:
Manuel Uhm is the Director, Silicon Marketing at Xilinx, the leader in flexible and adaptive processing platforms. His focus is on Product Management for all device families, including the Versal ACAP (Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform). Manuel is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Wireless Innovation Forum (formerly the SDR Forum), which is responsible for the CBRS standards for spectrum sharing between naval radar and commercial broadband services, as well as the SCA standard for military radios. He has served on the Board since 2003 in various roles including Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
Previously, Manuel was the NI SDR Director of Marketing at National Instruments, the leader in Software Defined Radio platforms. Before that, Manuel was the Marketing Director of Mobile for MIPS Technologies where he was responsible for leading MIPS’ penetration into the mobile industry. Prior to joining MIPS, Manuel had a previous stint at Xilinx as the Director of Wireless Communications, where he grew the wireless business into Xilinx’s #1 end market.
Manuel received his master of business administration from Simon Fraser University and studied electrical engineering at Queen’s University.
Harold Giddings created "Signals Everywhere", a website with multiple publications (including a podcast!) about SDR. In this episode, we talk about how Harold first discovered software radio, learned about it, and some of the topics most interesting to him in the SDR community right now.
Harold's Bio I’ve been into radios and scanning in general since I was a young kid playing with a basic 10 channel crystal controlled police scanner. On and off from there I’d use a hand held scanner to find interesting signals although most of the time that’s all it was. Something interesting that I couldn’t do anything with.
A few years ago in an IRC server I used to hang out on someone approached me about something called an SDR, it was a DVB-T TV tuner stick whose driver was hacked to allow wide band reception with a water fall display. These were crazy inexpensive although not of the best quality at the time.
With several of them in hand I saw an entirely new world of radio, I was able to access radio bands and signals I never could have before and all that with the added benefit for a large waterfall display.
I became obsessed about learning how these devices worked and about radio communications in general.
I went on to obtain my Extra class Amateur Radio license and founded Signals Everywhere, a community where I could both share what I've learned with the community while learning from them in the process.
Signals Everywhere is about exactly that, learning from others and teaching what you know. Growing as a community and expanding your knowledge in ways you never knew.
This brief episode introduces the Signals and Bits Podcast. Software radio provides a gateway to explore many different topics and technology, and my goal for this show is provide a forum to share ideas and learn from people working in and around SDR. Come back for Episode 1!